Ubisoft apologises for Assassin's Creed: Unity bugfest

Ubisoft has apologised for serious bugs in its recently-released Assassin's Creed: Unity, promising to make things right for its fans by giving away previously-chargeable downloadable content.

While Ubisoft initially tried to blame AMD processors and graphics hardware on the buggy nature of its latest Assassin's Creed title, which it must be noted was developed as part of Nvidia's GameWorks programme, it was rapidly discovered that flaws in the game - ranging from disappearing faces and bizarrely-leaning crowds to outright crashes - affected all versions, including its console releases, on all hardware.

Ubisoft has now come clean, admitting that the launch version of the game was severely flawed. 'Unfortunately, at launch, the overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues,' wrote Ubisoft's Yannis Mallat in an open letter on the matter. 'I want to sincerely apologize on behalf of Ubisoft and the entire Assassin's Creed team. These problems took away from your enjoyment of the game, and kept many of you from experiencing the game at its fullest potential.'

The apology isn't empty, either. Mallat details the three patches that have been thus far launched, including one released late last night, which include more than 300 fixes for known flaws in the game. Mallat also announced that the first downloadable content pack for the game, Dead Kings, will be made available to all owners completely free of charge upon its release by way of apology for the parlous state of the game at launch.

For Season Pass holders, either post-purchase or as part of the Gold Edition of the game, who would have received the DLC anyway, the apology goes still further: the ability to claim a free copy of The Crew, Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Rayman Legends or - oddly - Just Dance 2015 by way of further apology. Further downloadable content will be released as part of the Season Pass as promised, but Ubisoft has now discontinued further Season Pass purchases.